


The Zeroes Series and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Ships

by churchenbells



Category: Zeroes Series - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Gen, I guess there'll be death and violence?, Nate should Not Date, Zeroes: Bad End, it was darker than i expected
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-08-28 06:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16717937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/churchenbells/pseuds/churchenbells
Summary: Short little ficlets about the worst outcomes for non-canon ships in Zeroes.





	1. Riptide (Nate/Flicker)

Chizara didn't know how they'd gotten to this point.

Maybe it had started when Flicker— _Riley_ , Chizara reminded herself. She wasn't giving Riley the satisfaction of parading herself around like a bona fide superhero— when  _Riley_ had fallen for Nate's cheap anonymous trick, thrown out whatever fraternal relationship they'd claimed to have in favor of tasting tonsils at every team meeting. 

Or maybe it had been the first time Nate taught Riley about charisma, about how it felt to be on top of the world, to be Nate-Fucking-Saldana. He'd doomed them then, Chizara decided, because her trick had been the opposite of his. Nate at least had the decency to fold into himself, but not Riley. Not Riley, who'd loved superpowers enough to change her name, loved having  _power_ over others in every way. She'd filled up the room that afternoon, took the very air out of Chizara's lungs and replaced the air with pure  _Riley_  until Chizara was drowning in the light glinting off her dark glasses and the folds of her bright red dress. Chizara had never considered Riley anything other than a teammate, but in that moment she'd understood just what Nate saw in Riley. Hell, she'd almost wanted to climb over the chairs and kiss her too. 

Nate had what he needed to really take control then. No more sitting in the back, not after Riley could snatch the eyes right out of Chizara's head, take every scrap of attention in the room and feed it into Nate's all-consuming ego. There wasn't a team after that. Not really. There was Nate and Riley, the tsunami that swept up everyone in the room and took them wherever Nate pleased, no matter how suicidal a mission it was.

Riley wasn't shining now. The stolen Hummer only had five people in it, after Nate had forgotten... someone Chizara couldn't quite recall either. There had been someone else in the team, someone other than Kelsie, but they'd left soon after Riley's power-up. Ethan thought Riley's light had swallowed the person up, like a flash of lightning erasing the image on undeveloped film. Crazy. Ethan hadn't really been quite right after that.

"We can't do this! We're going to fucking die!" Ethan squawked, his sweaty palms slipping off of the steering wheel. He really was a chickenshit sometimes. 

"There's nothing to worry about, Scam. We've got this all planned out." Nate's voice was smooth and commanding as always, but Chizara doubted he could do anything to hold back the tears forming in Ethan's eyes. He'd broken a long time ago. It reminded Chizara of a laptop she'd seen in Bob's, its insides completely melted and blackened after a power surge. Something about what Nate and Riley did together had fried Ethan's brain, left him a wreck. He was like Kelsie, who submitted too easily, wasn't experienced in fending off Nate's clumsy excursions into their minds. Not like Chizara, who'd had enough willpower to understand when there wasn't anything she could do other than disagree with them in her head. Her own built-in surge protector.

Ethan started sobbing, each sob punctuated by swearing in between. "I want to go home..." he whimpered. Chizara didn't have the heart to tell him that home didn't exist anymore. Murderers like them didn't get to go home. Mom had been right about the Zeroes after all. Nothing but trouble. Look where she was now, in New Orleans with the FBI breathing down her neck, following some rich kid who thought that he could take over the world. 

Chizara's brooding was interrupted by a sharp stab of pain behind her eyes followed by needles up her spine. Someone had electronics, and lots of them. A quick peek in the rearview mirror confirmed her fears.

"It's the feds!" Kelsie yelled. She'd seen it just a second after Chizara. Chizara hadn't even had enough time to warn her to keep quiet. 

The three words sent the car swerving to the left. Chizara felt Ethan's panic and the car spiraling out of control. Damn Kelsie's power! Chizara could hardly register the commands yelled through the loudspeaker over the high pitched squeal in her ears. Was this a panic attack, the wheels of the car, or Ethan's screaming? She considered crashing the car, just to make this nauseating spinning stop, but she'd never tried keeping the airbags on while crashing a car. Nate was trying to take the steering wheel off Ethan's hands, but Ethan had frozen up out of fright. Was this how it ended? All of those ridiculous schemes, the sacrifices, the lost childhoods, was it all going to be thrown down the drain because Ethan couldn't keep it together, and Nate and Riley couldn't keep  _Ethan_ together?

Nate finally managed to kick Ethans leg out of the way, and slammed on the brakes. Too late. The front half of the car crumpled. They'd hit some sort of concrete barrier head-on. Chizara's head jerked forward like a giant had snatched her by the hair, and her seatbelt tightened around her ribcage, strangling her. She could barely hear Riley crying out in pain. She opened her eyes despite their insistence that they were rolling in her head, and surveyed the damage. Only half of the air-bags had deployed. Chizara could only hope that hadn't been her fault.

To make things worse, Chizara could see the people in the car behind them, all armed to the teeth. They all looked about as terrified as Ethan, which either meant Kelsie'd started feeding Ethan's panic into them, or they'd heard about the notorious Cambria Five, the terror of the West Coast. 

Chizara had become familiar with the smell of blood over the last few months, and she could smell it now, coming from the front seat.

"Oh my god!" Riley cried. Chizara wondered if she was getting a first-person view of the carnage in the front, or...

She kept her eyes firmly away from whatever was in the front seat and unclipped her seat belt. The impact had rattled her bones and turned her joints into liquid. Broken glass crunched beneath her stumbling feet as she struggled to reach the door before the FBI did, before they could take them into whatever prison they had for supervillains.

The door was wrenched open, sending more glass cascading down into the Hummer.

"Come out with your hands up! No funny business, we're fully prepared to take out freaks like you."

This was what it had come to.

 

 


	2. Hunger (Nate/Kelsie)

Flicker woke from one nightmare into another. Someone was in her house.

The footsteps were soft and precise, the footsteps of someone who was experienced in sneaking into where they weren't wanted. Flicker attempted to throw herself into the intruder's eyes to no avail. They must have been out of range. Which meant they must have known to stay out of her range. Perfectly fine with her, as long as they stayed that far away. 

Her pajamas were drenched in sweat, despite the cool tile she'd been lying on. She'd taken to sleeping in the bathroom ever since her discovery that her bedroom didn't have a working lock. It was more for peace of mind than anything. Flicker knew locks wouldn't stop a swarm for long, had seen for herself from too many viewpoints the raw power of a crowd hell-bent on feeding, undeterred by small things like love or pain or even their own bodies bruising and breaking as they clambered over each other for a taste of blood. 

Her own nails were chipped and bloody. 

It defied explanation how  _easy_ it had been to wrap herself in the swarm, to give up all sense of identity in favor of that beautiful oneness. The hunger. But she'd done it before, hadn't she? For Nate's Ultimate Goal. That was what the connection was about, in the beginning. It seemed almost too good to be true, that after everything Kelsie had gone through she'd found a silver lining in Nate. Nate had been positively buoyant too, and his power fit into Kelsie's perfectly, taking the groups energy to dizzying new heights. Their happiness spread out over everyone in the group until everybody couldn't help but share that happiness, to smile about how  _wonderful_ it was that Nate and Kelsie had found each other. Not that Flicker needed a reason for that. It may have been slightly selfish of her, but she was just happy that she hadn't broken Nate's heart.

And happiness turned into something more, into a laser-sharp focus that turned the Zeroes into an unstoppable force of change. The Petri Dish, Desert Springs, even handling Ethan's sister had been as simple as a practice mission. They'd all worked together perfectly, every Zero a moving part in the world's most efficient machine. Like six people in one body, a purer version of Ren and Davey's love. Until Ethan had done what Ethan did best. Break it up.

Flicker pressed her ear to the door, holding her breath. Were the footsteps getting closer? If this was a swarm, her best bet was to stay in the bathroom. She'd be cornered, sure, but what a swarm wanted was a challenge. The white-hot flashes of fear and adrenaline were exquisite, but not enough. What they really wanted was hope, the chase, and the final  _crush_. Maybe if she stayed in one spot, they'd get bored. Not that that had worked for Davey...

No use scaring herself now. This was just a regular burglar at a bad time. There was only one person in the house, and swarms didn't work like that. Not unless they'd already practiced on Zeroes and knew they needed a lure.

Of course, that'd only work on a dumbass like Ethan.

Wherever he was now, she hoped he ended up in Hell. Someone had been keeping an eye on Ethan, but Flicker couldn't remember who. Not her, that was for sure. She couldn't have cared less if that little rat was a billionaire or dying in a ditch.

Ren had said it was inevitable that a Mob would become a Swarm, but deep down, Flicker knew it had been Ethan's fault. Maybe Nate had been too ambitious, maybe his thirst for knowledge had been twisted in their crowd connection, but there was no way it had been anyone's fault but Ethan's. It had been  _him_ who first sent anger rippling through the connection, his resentful jealousy twisting everyone's stomachs. How stupid, how  _unfair_ it was that everything that had been going so well for the Zeroes had been ruined by petty relationship drama. How could _they_ do this to _Ethan_? How could they fail to consider _his feelings_? The real question was how could Ethan live with himself after it had been  _him_ who'd broken up the Zeroes again, permanently? 

God, they'd joked about it, too. How Nate kissed like he was trying to eat Kelsie's face off. Harmless fun, really. He'd laughed it off and asked them if they were doing any better. 

They were completely wrong. That kiss had been nothing like face-eating, not like the kind that happened after Ethan's squeaky voice interrupted a kiss and Flicker could see everyone's eyes jerking in their sockets. 

A mean, dark part of Flicker that she tried to keep hidden found it unfair that Ethan hadn't been the one ripped to shreds. Nate's face paled instead, and Nate was the one to trip over himself running for the door, pursued by a thousand shaky cameras. Kelsie had been closest, of course, but Flicker was on his way to the door. A small mercy, that she hadn't been able to see... what she'd done to her best friend. The soured unity wouldn't give her any more kindness than that. All of the viewpoints of the Zeroes coalesced into one perfect picture of the scene. All of those eyes she had known so well. How could she look through those eyes again, when it had been through Chizara's thick lashes that she'd watched Nate's skin be stripped off of him as easily as fabric, when it had been Ethan's bitten nails she'd seen ripping through to bone? When—

Flicker heaved into the toilet bowl next to her. There it was, the other reason she'd started sleeping here. Every sound would set off a series of sickening mental images, everything from the scratch of a tree branch to the gurgle of plumbing. 

She'd been heard. There was a soft tapping at the door. A familiar voice whispered through the crack at the bottom.

"Flicker? Are you in here?"

Of course. The one set of eyes she couldn't see through. The only Zero who's presence didn't call forth painful memories. "Thibault," she whispered back, relief flooding through her bones. She unlocked the door, and Thibault rushed forward so fast Flicker thought she had misjudged, that maybe swarms could lure and speak. But Thibault didn't harm her, only buried his head into her shoulder, gasping like he'd just ran a marathon. 

"We have to get out of here. Now. I don't know about Ethan but Chizara's plan didn't work and—" He was cut off by a strangled sob. The relief that had flooded through her was quickly replaced by dread. They wouldn't go after Ethan after all. Swarm and Mob were back in Cambria.

They couldn't run. Glitch and Coin tried, and they saw what that had come to. Without some kind of distraction, Thibault wasn't fooling anyone.

Flocker gathered her courage, got ready to hear the worst. "How close are they?"

"It's going to be okay, we can just disappear, I promise it's going to be okay if you just don't panic." He peppered kisses over Flicker's face, but that wasn't any comfort right now.

"Thibault. How close are they?"

Thibault was silent. The crowd outside was not. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natefucker, I blame you.


	3. Silence (Ethan/Thibault)

They had to move into a new hotel. Again. 

It wasn't Ethan's fault, not really. It was Thibault's fault for leaving him alone for so long. He'd known how confused Ethan got when Thibault wasn't around and still left him alone so that he could blab to the hotel staff? Stupid. 

Thibault traced the anxious path he'd worn into the cheap carpet, considering his options. After all of those years spent in the same hotel room, it was odd to be forced into moving every few weeks. He couldn't go back to the Magnifique, that was for sure. Gangsters and cute blondes may have had a short memory or assumed Ethan was dead, but not Flicker. The second Thibault walked into the Magnifique, he'd be greeted by Bellwether, maybe even the police if he'd gotten that desperate and eager to bring his Zeroes back.

The other Zero in question stirred. "Teebo? What's going on?" The thin line of attention connecting the two of them sent thrills down Thibault's spine. It was still shocking, not having to remind Ethan of his name every time the other boy woke up. Ethan could forget where he was, the date, even his own age, but never Thibault's name. That was how strong, how  _perfect_ , their connection was.

Ethan shuddered like he'd been feeling the same thing. "Is it the Bagrovs? Do we have to leave?" he whispered. That was another thing he always remembered, and Thibault was glad for it. It would have been impossible to deal with an uncooperative Ethan on top of everything else. Thibault scanned the surrounding area from the window instead of answering. No sign of anybody he knew, at least. Ethan's face had been largely forgotten by Cambria, so they weren't likely to run into any trouble if they moved out at night...

"It shouldn't be a problem," he muttered almost to himself. Then he stepped away from the window and repeated for Ethan. "We should move soon, though. Just in case," he added.

Ethan sat up, clutching the blankets to his body. He was paler now, and his freckles had faded from staying indoors all day. It was a shame, really, that the weather had to get colder. Thibault fondly remembered the earlier summer months spent in the stuffiest room with worst air-conditioning he'd ever experienced. He'd told Ethan they couldn't afford to open the windows because they'd be caught, and then watched Ethan's face flush, lines of sweat chasing each other down his neck. "How soon?" Ethan asked.

"A few days."

"A few days... Well if we're leaving anyway, I should call my mom. She hasn't heard from me since..." Ethan trailed off, his face betraying the confusion he always felt if he tried to remember anything specific, as if his brain was a record player skipping over the Thibault-blocked grooves in the cerebrum. "... What's the day?"

There it was, the same discussion they had every few days. Thibault would've found the predictability unbearable if it wasn't better than Ethan panicking over just how long he'd been hiding from the Bagrovs. "The thirteenth." He sat next to Ethan, bracing himself for the meltdown.

"July thirteenth? Holy shit, my mom must be fucking pissed! I haven't called her in more than a week? I—"

Thibault cut him off. "December thirteenth, Ethan. We've been over this." He maneuvered himself under the covers and held Ethan closer to him. At first, he'd told himself it was just to calm Ethan down. Now he relished Ethan's body heat, sighing against his cheek. Absolutely perfect.

Except for the fact that Ethan, annoyingly enough, was still stuck on the same topic. Broken record, indeed. "December? I-I can't remember... Did I even call my mom? At all? We were in the big place... and then somewhere else. When did we even get _here?"_ Ethan's voice was hollow with shock, his connection with Thibault splintering as he stared at the wall. Unwilling to let the already-thin line die away, Thibault pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. Ethan's brow furrowed again, confusion etched into every line of his face.

Maybe it had been wrong to get so attached. He should've sent Ethan back home the second Ethan's mother had appeared on the television screen, begging for any sign of her son. Should've given him up before the missing posters went down, taking any hope of a family reunion with them. But it had felt so  _right_ when Ethan had remembered him, even the spray of soggy crumbs couldn't smother his glee. And why shouldn't he get to keep something? He'd lost so much, it was only fair that he got to take from the universe, keep the balance. If he couldn't hold on to his family, his home, even some dog-eared book, why couldn't he have this one bit of happiness? 

It wasn't like Ethan minded. He felt the same, he  _would_ feel the same if only he could remember all of the days they'd spent together. And he would have to, eventually. 

"It'll be okay," he reassured Ethan, "We're going to move in a bit, and then once the Bagrovs stop trying to kill you, you can explain everything to your mom," Thibault grinned when Ethan practically melted into him. For some reason, the threat of death usually made Ethan calmer, more willing to follow him. He'd have to find something else once the Bagrovs weren't enough to justify more than two months in hiding. Perhaps a murderous Zero on the loose, or the FBI. He could even steal a car, take them away where nobody knew their names or faces.

But for now, holding Ethan like this was all he needed. "I'll take care of everything," he breathed.

And he would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably not as realistic/well-written as the other chapters, but who are you to stop me? I write what I want.  
> I wrote this instead of studying for my English final, maybe I'll just turn this in instead.


End file.
